Buildings are not benign; rather, they commonly manipulate and abuse their human users. Architectural Agents makes the case that buildings act in the world independently of their makers, patrons, ...
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Buildings are not benign; rather, they commonly manipulate and abuse their human users. Architectural Agents makes the case that buildings act in the world independently of their makers, patrons, owners, or occupants. And often they act badly. Treating buildings as bodies, Annabel Jane Wharton writes biographies of symptomatic structures in order to diagnose their pathologies. The violence of some sites is rooted in historical trauma; the unhealthy spatial behaviors of other spaces stem from political and economic ruthlessness. The places examined range from the Cloisters Museum in New York City and the Palestine Archaeological Museum (renamed the Rockefeller Museum) in Jerusalem to the grand Hostal de los Reyes Católicos in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and Las Vegas casino resorts. Recognizing that a study of pathological spaces would not be complete without an investigation of digital structures, Wharton integrates into her argument an original consideration of the powerful architectures of video games and immersive worlds. Her work mounts a persuasive critique of popular phenomenological treatments of architecture. Architectural Agents advances an alternative theorization of buildings’ agency—one rooted in buildings’ essential materiality and historical formation—as the basis for this significant intervention in current debates over the boundaries separating humans, animals, and machines.Less

Annabel Jane Wharton

Published in print: 2015-02-15

Buildings are not benign; rather, they commonly manipulate and abuse their human users. Architectural Agents makes the case that buildings act in the world independently of their makers, patrons, owners, or occupants. And often they act badly. Treating buildings as bodies, Annabel Jane Wharton writes biographies of symptomatic structures in order to diagnose their pathologies. The violence of some sites is rooted in historical trauma; the unhealthy spatial behaviors of other spaces stem from political and economic ruthlessness. The places examined range from the Cloisters Museum in New York City and the Palestine Archaeological Museum (renamed the Rockefeller Museum) in Jerusalem to the grand Hostal de los Reyes Católicos in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and Las Vegas casino resorts. Recognizing that a study of pathological spaces would not be complete without an investigation of digital structures, Wharton integrates into her argument an original consideration of the powerful architectures of video games and immersive worlds. Her work mounts a persuasive critique of popular phenomenological treatments of architecture. Architectural Agents advances an alternative theorization of buildings’ agency—one rooted in buildings’ essential materiality and historical formation—as the basis for this significant intervention in current debates over the boundaries separating humans, animals, and machines.

This book aims to give equal attention to Western and non-Western structures and built landscapes. From Tenochtitlan’s Great Pyramid in Mexico City and the Duomo in Florence to Levittown’s suburban ...
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This book aims to give equal attention to Western and non-Western structures and built landscapes. From Tenochtitlan’s Great Pyramid in Mexico City and the Duomo in Florence to Levittown’s suburban tract housing and the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, its coverage includes the world’s most celebrated structures and spaces along with many examples of more humble vernacular buildings. The book presents key moments and innovations in architectural modernity around the globe. Integrating architectural and social history, this book pays particular attention to the motivations of client and architect in the design and construction of environments both sacred and secular: palaces and places of worship as well as such characteristically modern structures as the skyscraper, the department store, and the cinema. It also focuses on the role of patrons and addresses to an unparalleled degree the impact of women in commissioning, creating, and inhabiting the built environment, with Gertrude Jekyll, Lina Bo Bardi, and ZahaHadid taking their place beside Brunelleschi, Sinan, and Le Corbusier.Less

Architecture since 1400

Kathleen James-Chakraborty

Published in print: 2014-01-01

This book aims to give equal attention to Western and non-Western structures and built landscapes. From Tenochtitlan’s Great Pyramid in Mexico City and the Duomo in Florence to Levittown’s suburban tract housing and the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing, its coverage includes the world’s most celebrated structures and spaces along with many examples of more humble vernacular buildings. The book presents key moments and innovations in architectural modernity around the globe. Integrating architectural and social history, this book pays particular attention to the motivations of client and architect in the design and construction of environments both sacred and secular: palaces and places of worship as well as such characteristically modern structures as the skyscraper, the department store, and the cinema. It also focuses on the role of patrons and addresses to an unparalleled degree the impact of women in commissioning, creating, and inhabiting the built environment, with Gertrude Jekyll, Lina Bo Bardi, and ZahaHadid taking their place beside Brunelleschi, Sinan, and Le Corbusier.

Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source ...
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Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. This book shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. The book discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, the book contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However, as this text makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory.Less

Architecture's Historical Turn : Phenomenology and the Rise of the Postmodern

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Published in print: 2010-05-11

Architecture’s Historical Turn traces the hidden history of architectural phenomenology, a movement that reflected a key turning point in the early phases of postmodernism and a legitimating source for those architects who first dared to confront history as an intellectual problem and not merely as a stylistic question. This book shows how architectural phenomenology radically transformed how architects engaged, theorized, and produced history. The book discusses the contributions of leading members, including Jean Labatut, Charles Moore, Christian Norberg-Schulz, and Kenneth Frampton. For architects maturing after World War II, the book contends, architectural history was a problem rather than a given. Paradoxically, their awareness of modernism’s historicity led some of them to search for an ahistorical experiential constant that might underpin all architectural expression. They drew from phenomenology, exploring the work of Bachelard, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, which they translated for architectural audiences. Initially, the concept that experience could be a timeless architectural language provided a unifying intellectual basis for the stylistic pluralism that characterized postmodernism. It helped give theory—especially the theory of architectural history—a new importance over practice. However, as this text makes clear, architectural phenomenologists could not accept the idea of theory as an end in itself. In the mid-1980s they were caught in the contradictory and untenable position of having to formulate their own demotion of theory.

For more than a century, Chicago's skyline has included some of the world's most distinctive and inspiring buildings. This history of the Windy City's skyscrapers begins in the key period of ...
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For more than a century, Chicago's skyline has included some of the world's most distinctive and inspiring buildings. This history of the Windy City's skyscrapers begins in the key period of reconstruction after the Great Fire of 1871 and concludes in 1934 with the onset of the Great Depression, which brought architectural progress to a standstill. During this time, such iconic landmarks as the Chicago Tribune Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Marshall Field and Company Building, the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Palmolive Building, the Masonic Temple, the City Opera, Merchandise Mart, and many others rose to impressive new heights, thanks to innovations in building methods and materials. Solid, earthbound edifices of iron, brick, and stone made way for towers of steel and plate glass, imparting a striking new look to Chicago's growing urban landscape. This book reveals the daily struggles, technical breakthroughs, and negotiations that produced these magnificent buildings. It also considers how the city's infamous political climate contributed to its architecture, as building and zoning codes were often disputed by shifting networks of rivals, labor unions, professional organizations, and municipal bodies. Featuring more than a hundred photographs and illustrations of the city's physically impressive and beautifully diverse architecture, the book highlights an exceptionally dynamic, energetic period of architectural progress in Chicago.Less

Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934

Thomas Leslie

Published in print: 2013-05-15

For more than a century, Chicago's skyline has included some of the world's most distinctive and inspiring buildings. This history of the Windy City's skyscrapers begins in the key period of reconstruction after the Great Fire of 1871 and concludes in 1934 with the onset of the Great Depression, which brought architectural progress to a standstill. During this time, such iconic landmarks as the Chicago Tribune Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Marshall Field and Company Building, the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Palmolive Building, the Masonic Temple, the City Opera, Merchandise Mart, and many others rose to impressive new heights, thanks to innovations in building methods and materials. Solid, earthbound edifices of iron, brick, and stone made way for towers of steel and plate glass, imparting a striking new look to Chicago's growing urban landscape. This book reveals the daily struggles, technical breakthroughs, and negotiations that produced these magnificent buildings. It also considers how the city's infamous political climate contributed to its architecture, as building and zoning codes were often disputed by shifting networks of rivals, labor unions, professional organizations, and municipal bodies. Featuring more than a hundred photographs and illustrations of the city's physically impressive and beautifully diverse architecture, the book highlights an exceptionally dynamic, energetic period of architectural progress in Chicago.

Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) was one of the most influential landscape architects of the 20th-century. Though he is most widely known for the FDR Memorial in Washington DC and the Sea Ranch in ...
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Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) was one of the most influential landscape architects of the 20th-century. Though he is most widely known for the FDR Memorial in Washington DC and the Sea Ranch in California, his creative process – derived in the 1960s from experiments in choreographic scoring – represents an overlooked antecedent to today’s approach to landscape and urban design, which emphasizes infrastructural networks, ecological processes, multidisciplinary collaboration, as well as public participation. Emerging from exhaustive study of his vast archive of drawings and documents (housed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives), the book critically interprets Halprin’s participatory design process and argues for the applicability of aspects of that process in city-shaping today. As an urban pioneer, Halprin’s most noteworthy frontier became the nation’s densely settled metropolitan areas during a time of urban “crisis” and “renewal.” Paralleling and responding to a broader public demand for social and political participation in the 1960s, he formulated this creative process, which he called “The RSVP Cycles,” to stimulate a participatory environmental experience. He did not work alone, however. His success depended on collaboration, and particularly the artistic symbiosis that existed between him and his wife, the avant-garde dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin.Less

City Choreographer : Lawrence Halprin in Urban Renewal America

Alison Bick Hirsch

Published in print: 2014-04-15

Lawrence Halprin (1916-2009) was one of the most influential landscape architects of the 20th-century. Though he is most widely known for the FDR Memorial in Washington DC and the Sea Ranch in California, his creative process – derived in the 1960s from experiments in choreographic scoring – represents an overlooked antecedent to today’s approach to landscape and urban design, which emphasizes infrastructural networks, ecological processes, multidisciplinary collaboration, as well as public participation. Emerging from exhaustive study of his vast archive of drawings and documents (housed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Architectural Archives), the book critically interprets Halprin’s participatory design process and argues for the applicability of aspects of that process in city-shaping today. As an urban pioneer, Halprin’s most noteworthy frontier became the nation’s densely settled metropolitan areas during a time of urban “crisis” and “renewal.” Paralleling and responding to a broader public demand for social and political participation in the 1960s, he formulated this creative process, which he called “The RSVP Cycles,” to stimulate a participatory environmental experience. He did not work alone, however. His success depended on collaboration, and particularly the artistic symbiosis that existed between him and his wife, the avant-garde dancer and choreographer Anna Halprin.

The end of apartheid and the transition to parliamentary democracy brought to the surface a host of tensions that were long suppressed under white minority rule. Yet as the ‘new nation’ struggled to ...
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The end of apartheid and the transition to parliamentary democracy brought to the surface a host of tensions that were long suppressed under white minority rule. Yet as the ‘new nation’ struggled to establish a firm footing, the lingering ghosts of the past continued to haunt the present. The primary aim of this book is to explore how collective memory works, that is, how the historical past is made to matter in the ‘new South Africa’. A central concern is the question of representation, that is, how the historical past is made to appear in the present. How is the history of white minority rule represented, and thereby mediated, after the end of apartheid and the transition to parliamentary democracy? Addressing this question requires a critical examination of how the practice of commemoration inscribes collective memory in places, objects, and words, and conversely, how the stories attached to these mnemonic devices selectively recount the past in ways that sometimes sanitize, distort, embellish, compress, and even fabricate history in the service of ‘nation-building’. It begins with the premise that such seemingly disconnected are all vehicles for the storage and dissemination of collective memory. Far from operating as passive receptacles or neutral storehouses for holding onto the remembered past, these mnemonic devices are active agents in shaping the construction of a tenuous collective identity and shared meaning in the everyday lives of the South African citizenry.Less

Commemorating and Forgetting : Challenges for the New South Africa

Martin J. Murray

Published in print: 2013-05-01

The end of apartheid and the transition to parliamentary democracy brought to the surface a host of tensions that were long suppressed under white minority rule. Yet as the ‘new nation’ struggled to establish a firm footing, the lingering ghosts of the past continued to haunt the present. The primary aim of this book is to explore how collective memory works, that is, how the historical past is made to matter in the ‘new South Africa’. A central concern is the question of representation, that is, how the historical past is made to appear in the present. How is the history of white minority rule represented, and thereby mediated, after the end of apartheid and the transition to parliamentary democracy? Addressing this question requires a critical examination of how the practice of commemoration inscribes collective memory in places, objects, and words, and conversely, how the stories attached to these mnemonic devices selectively recount the past in ways that sometimes sanitize, distort, embellish, compress, and even fabricate history in the service of ‘nation-building’. It begins with the premise that such seemingly disconnected are all vehicles for the storage and dissemination of collective memory. Far from operating as passive receptacles or neutral storehouses for holding onto the remembered past, these mnemonic devices are active agents in shaping the construction of a tenuous collective identity and shared meaning in the everyday lives of the South African citizenry.

This biography of Clarence Samuel Stein comprehensively examines his built and unbuilt projects and his intellectual legacy as a proponent of the “Garden City” for a modern age. This examination of ...
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This biography of Clarence Samuel Stein comprehensively examines his built and unbuilt projects and his intellectual legacy as a proponent of the “Garden City” for a modern age. This examination of Stein's life and legacy focuses on four critical themes: his collaborative ethic in envisioning policy, design, and development solutions; promotion and implementation of “investment housing;” his revolutionary approach to community design, as epitomized in the Radburn Idea; and his advocacy of communitarian regionalism. His cutting-edge projects such as Sunnyside Gardens in New York City; Baldwin Hills Village in Los Angeles; and Radburn, New Jersey, his “town for the motor age,” continue to inspire community designers and planners in the United States and around the world. Stein was among the first architects to integrate new design solutions and support facilities into large-scale projects intended primarily to house working-class people, and he was a cofounder of the Regional Planning Association of America. As a planner, designer, and, at times, financier of new housing developments, Stein wrestled with the challenges of creating what today we would term “livable,” “walkable,” and “green” communities during the ascendency of the automobile. He managed these challenges by partnering private capital with government funding, as well as by collaborating with colleagues in planning, architecture, real estate, and politics.Less

Community Architect : The Life and Vision of Clarence S. Stein

Kristin E. Larsen

Published in print: 2016-08-03

This biography of Clarence Samuel Stein comprehensively examines his built and unbuilt projects and his intellectual legacy as a proponent of the “Garden City” for a modern age. This examination of Stein's life and legacy focuses on four critical themes: his collaborative ethic in envisioning policy, design, and development solutions; promotion and implementation of “investment housing;” his revolutionary approach to community design, as epitomized in the Radburn Idea; and his advocacy of communitarian regionalism. His cutting-edge projects such as Sunnyside Gardens in New York City; Baldwin Hills Village in Los Angeles; and Radburn, New Jersey, his “town for the motor age,” continue to inspire community designers and planners in the United States and around the world. Stein was among the first architects to integrate new design solutions and support facilities into large-scale projects intended primarily to house working-class people, and he was a cofounder of the Regional Planning Association of America. As a planner, designer, and, at times, financier of new housing developments, Stein wrestled with the challenges of creating what today we would term “livable,” “walkable,” and “green” communities during the ascendency of the automobile. He managed these challenges by partnering private capital with government funding, as well as by collaborating with colleagues in planning, architecture, real estate, and politics.

How does architecture make its appearance in civil society? This book pursues this challenging question by exploring architecture, planning, and law as cultural forces. Analyzing the complex ...
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How does architecture make its appearance in civil society? This book pursues this challenging question by exploring architecture, planning, and law as cultural forces. Analyzing the complex entanglements between these disciplines in the Cuban Republic, the book reveals how architects joined with other professionals and intellectuals in efforts to establish a stable civil society, from the promulgation of a new Cuban Constitution in 1940 up until the Cuban Revolution. By arguing that constitutionalism was elaborated through architectural principles and practices as well as legal ones, the book offers a new view of architectural modernism as a political and social instrument. It contends that constitutionalism produced a decisive confluence of law and architecture, a means for planning the future of Cuba. The importance of architecture in this process is laid bare by this book’s thorough scrutiny of a variety of textual, graphical, and physical artifacts. It examines constitutional articles, exhibitions, interviews, master plans, monuments, and other primary materials as acts of design. Read from the perspective of architectural history, this book demonstrates how the modernist concepts that developed as an international discourse before the Second World War evolved through interactions with other disciplines into a civil urbanism in Cuba. And read from the perspective of Cuban history, the book explains how not only material products such as buildings and monuments but also the immaterial methods of architecture as a cultural practice produced ideas that had consequential effects on the political circumstances of the nation.Less

Timothy Hyde

Published in print: 2013-01-01

How does architecture make its appearance in civil society? This book pursues this challenging question by exploring architecture, planning, and law as cultural forces. Analyzing the complex entanglements between these disciplines in the Cuban Republic, the book reveals how architects joined with other professionals and intellectuals in efforts to establish a stable civil society, from the promulgation of a new Cuban Constitution in 1940 up until the Cuban Revolution. By arguing that constitutionalism was elaborated through architectural principles and practices as well as legal ones, the book offers a new view of architectural modernism as a political and social instrument. It contends that constitutionalism produced a decisive confluence of law and architecture, a means for planning the future of Cuba. The importance of architecture in this process is laid bare by this book’s thorough scrutiny of a variety of textual, graphical, and physical artifacts. It examines constitutional articles, exhibitions, interviews, master plans, monuments, and other primary materials as acts of design. Read from the perspective of architectural history, this book demonstrates how the modernist concepts that developed as an international discourse before the Second World War evolved through interactions with other disciplines into a civil urbanism in Cuba. And read from the perspective of Cuban history, the book explains how not only material products such as buildings and monuments but also the immaterial methods of architecture as a cultural practice produced ideas that had consequential effects on the political circumstances of the nation.

In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As ...
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In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As nodes of public dialogue, they serve as platforms for dissenting views about the future and past of Berlin. This book introduces the concept of counter-preservation as a way to understand this intentional appropriation of decrepitude. The embrace of decay is a sign of Berlin's iconoclastic rebelliousness, but it has also been incorporated into the mainstream economy of tourism and development as part of the city's countercultural cachet. It presents the possibilities and shortcomings of counter-preservation as a dynamic force in Berlin and as a potential concept for other cities. Counter-preservation is part of Berlin's fabric: in the city's famed Hausprojekte (living projects) such as the Køpi, Tuntenhaus, and KA 86; in cultural centers such as the Haus Schwarzenberg, the Schokoladen, and the legendary, now defunct Tacheles; in memorials and museums; and even in commerce and residences. The appropriation of ruins is a way of carving out affordable spaces for housing, work, and cultural activities. It is also a visual statement against gentrification, and a complex representation of history, with the marks of different periods—the nineteenth century, World War II, postwar division, unification—on display for all to see. Counter-preservation exemplifies an everyday urbanism in which citizens shape private and public spaces with their own hands, but it also influences more formal designs, such as the Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt redevelopment proposal for a site peppered with ruins of Nazi barracks. By featuring these examples, the book questions conventional notions of architectural authorship and points toward the value of participatory environments.Less

Counterpreservation : Architectural Decay in Berlin Since 1989

Daniela Sandler

Published in print: 2016-11-03

In Berlin, decrepit structures do not always denote urban blight. Decayed buildings are incorporated into everyday life as residences, exhibition spaces, shops, offices, and as leisure space. As nodes of public dialogue, they serve as platforms for dissenting views about the future and past of Berlin. This book introduces the concept of counter-preservation as a way to understand this intentional appropriation of decrepitude. The embrace of decay is a sign of Berlin's iconoclastic rebelliousness, but it has also been incorporated into the mainstream economy of tourism and development as part of the city's countercultural cachet. It presents the possibilities and shortcomings of counter-preservation as a dynamic force in Berlin and as a potential concept for other cities. Counter-preservation is part of Berlin's fabric: in the city's famed Hausprojekte (living projects) such as the Køpi, Tuntenhaus, and KA 86; in cultural centers such as the Haus Schwarzenberg, the Schokoladen, and the legendary, now defunct Tacheles; in memorials and museums; and even in commerce and residences. The appropriation of ruins is a way of carving out affordable spaces for housing, work, and cultural activities. It is also a visual statement against gentrification, and a complex representation of history, with the marks of different periods—the nineteenth century, World War II, postwar division, unification—on display for all to see. Counter-preservation exemplifies an everyday urbanism in which citizens shape private and public spaces with their own hands, but it also influences more formal designs, such as the Topography of Terror, the Berlin Wall Memorial, and Daniel Libeskind's unbuilt redevelopment proposal for a site peppered with ruins of Nazi barracks. By featuring these examples, the book questions conventional notions of architectural authorship and points toward the value of participatory environments.

Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between ...
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Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between the Western mercantile and missionary communities and the city’s predominantly Chinese population. The book takes readers through three phases: the Thirteen Factories era from the eighteenth century to the 1850s; the Shamian enclave up to the early twentieth century; and the adoption of Western building techniques throughout the city as its architecture modernized in the early Republic. The discussion of architecture goes beyond stylistic trends to embrace the history of shared and disputed spaces, using a broadly chronological approach that combines social history with architectural and spatial analysis. With nearly a hundred carefully chosen images, this book illustrates how the foreign architectural footprints of the past form the modern Guangzhou.Less

Enclave to Urbanity : Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

Johnathan Andrew Farris

Published in print: 2016-10-01

Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between the Western mercantile and missionary communities and the city’s predominantly Chinese population. The book takes readers through three phases: the Thirteen Factories era from the eighteenth century to the 1850s; the Shamian enclave up to the early twentieth century; and the adoption of Western building techniques throughout the city as its architecture modernized in the early Republic. The discussion of architecture goes beyond stylistic trends to embrace the history of shared and disputed spaces, using a broadly chronological approach that combines social history with architectural and spatial analysis. With nearly a hundred carefully chosen images, this book illustrates how the foreign architectural footprints of the past form the modern Guangzhou.